Motorists drive past a newly installed billboard Wednesday near the intersection of Arkmo Road and Vine Road in Harrison. The billboard, which many believe to be racially charged, was put up Tuesday. A protest of the billboard was scheduled for Thursday. (ASSOCIATED PRESS / Samantha Baker)

HARRISON (AP) — Harrison leaders who want to put the city’s racist past behind it are decrying a recently erected billboard that reads, “Anti-Racist is a Code Word for Anti-White.”

The billboard went up Tuesday along a major route through the northern Arkansas city. A radio station with an advertisement on an adjacent panel asked that its sign be removed so no one would think that it was connected to the white supremacist sentiment.

“I think this is awful,” Harrison Mayor Jeff Crockett said. “It does not represent the people of Harrison’s attitude or the way they feel about any races. I think we’re welcoming to all. It’s trying to represent a false image of the way Harrison is.”

The Harrison Daily Times carried three stories about the sign on its front page Thursday, noting the criticism, protests and the sign owner’s explanation for erecting the sign.

“Regardless of the opinion a person holds, or what I think about that opinion, I believe he or she has a right to express it,” said Claude West, the owner of the Harrison Sign Co.

West said the 12-by-24-foot billboard is being rented for $200 a month for a year.

Harrison Area Chamber of Commerce President Patty Methvin says the community is dismayed by the sign — and that residents overwhelmingly disapprove of the sign’s message. She says Harrison’s Community Task Force on Race Relations is considering a “Love Thy Neighbor” campaign in response.

“This could be our call to arms,” Methvin told the Harrison paper.

Handbills distributed through town call on people to gather and protest at the billboard company headquarters and along the Harrison Bypass, which carries U.S. 62-65 around downtown. State figures show that about 10,000 vehicles travel the bypass daily.

Race riots a century ago chased all but one black person from Harrison, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, and in the 1980s the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan moved its headquarters there. A race-relations task force has been trying to change the city’s image.

The county had 131 black residents at the time of the 2010 census. There were 35,624 whites.